Posts Tagged ‘Fiction’

Before doling out cash to buy Dan Brown’s latest novel “The lost symbol”, I figured I’d give the reviews a glance. So, I looked it up on Amazon and after reading a handful of reviews, I came across this review……

“Dear Dan Brown:
Six years of waiting for this? Really! Here’s what I think happened…you had a contract to get a new novel out this year but you spent the last 5 1/2 years enjoying yourself with all the money you made…okay, you earned it…enjoy! But wait, now you have to hustle and get a novel to the publisher. No problem, you think as you take out the outline for the previous books. Instead of the grail, you’ll make it some “Lost Symbol” mainly because you’re at a loss as to how you’re going to meet that deadline. For the female role, you’ll turn her into a scientist in some unknown field. Just so you can have another female star in the movie, you’ll throw in a CIA agent. Instead of the crazy priest, you’ll make that role just a plain psycho that another Hollywood hunk can play. You’ll go through the motions but this time Langford won’t be as sharp as before which makes sense because you aren’t either. Instead of the Catholic church, you’ll use the Masons because you can Google Masons and get all kinds of alleged secrets and mysteries as you sit by the pool and sip on some expensive scotch. You’ll use Washington DC because, like the Masons, it’s easy to Google and maybe you’ve seen National Treasure. Okay, that takes care of the first 2/3 of the book. You’re almost there and you can see the money rolling in so you just wrap up the whole package with your optimism and hope that you can pull it off. Well, congratulations. It worked and I was amoung the million that were suckered on the 15th. I give you one star for the book and one star for the balls. I hope you enjoy my money but, Mr. Brown, please know that I don’t believe you earned it and I don’t think even you do. Really.
Signed,
Disappointed”

Despite such reviews, I intend to read this darned book but instead of looking for it in the book store, I’ll be watching for it in the local library.

On my way to California, over the July 4th weekend, I got to read a book the name of which I had heard a few times too many. Authored by the Chennai born, now Mumbai resident Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger is a story of a village boy by the name of Balram Halwai. The story, written as a letter to a Chinese diplomat scheduled to visit India in the near future, starts off with Balram walking the diplomat through a series of events in his life leading to his present day life . The author, over the course of the story, tries to shed some light behind the way the poor in India are treated by the rich and through the eyes of Balram, tries to put the reader in the shoes of Balram Halwai.

Arvind Adiga has a weird style of writing. This intelligent kid, nicknamed The White Tiger narrates the story in such a manner as to portray himself as a naive village idiot. Strangely, this intelligent but naive village idiot (yes, i recognize the contradiction) resorts to a very formal way of narration in the latter part of the book and concludes the story with a certain air of authority that is almost impossible to associate with a village idiot. Now, it could be that the character matured as the story progressed but thats a supposition the reader would have to make based on the style of writing for there’s certainly nothing in the story that will tell you that the character is maturing as a result of, let’s say, his experiences or age. While I’m not a prolific reader of books authored by Indians (and no, I’m not biased), I feel Jhumpa Lahiri, the Indian American author, stands a notch or two above Aravind Adiga.

All said, the book is a light read. So, if you have nothing better to do, this book might just help you kill some boredom.